Q&A: A Question About Two Carts
A Question About Two Carts
Question
Hello and blessings.
I just read the Rabbi’s book “Two Carts,” and there are things there that seem to me not to fit with things the Rabbi seems today to be more reserved about. Now, it could be that the Rabbi changed his mind after all, twenty years but I wanted to understand better.
The Rabbi touches there on the importance of da’at Torah and on the possibility of accepting views that contradict one another in a way that is not a severe analytic contradiction (such as divine foreknowledge and free choice), and it is not clear how that is expressed on the blog. After all, it seems that the Rabbi (justifiably) does not exempt the leading sages of the generation from criticism, even though one could argue that they have a better synthetic understanding. In addition, it seems that the Rabbi does not lightly accept logical contradictions, despite the possibility of distinguishing between severe analytic contradictions and less severe ones.
So I would be glad if the Rabbi could explain a bit better how the conceptions presented in the book are expressed in practice.
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. I criticize whoever, in my opinion, is not right. What am I supposed to do in light of what is written in Two Carts not criticize? Beyond that, synthetic contradictions are possible, and still they should not be accepted without a very good reason. If the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself were to say something that looked like a synthetic contradiction, I would consider it. But when we are dealing with less authoritative sources, I still see no reason to accept both sides of the contradiction.
Discussion on Answer
Forget da’at Torah and definitions. Someone smart can’t be criticized? I don’t understand this question.
Analytic criticism yes, but regarding synthetic criticism one has to think about how to accept the assumptions as correct, and if I understood correctly, according to the Rabbi the correct assumptions result from developing the synthetic muscle which develops through Torah study.
I want to emphasize that this is not coming from a position of objecting to criticism of rabbis, but more from an attempt to understand what the Rabbi meant.
If so, then I didn’t understand the meaning of “da’at Torah” in the book. Seemingly, it sounded like someone with more developed intuition, which would seem harder to criticize, no?